While the world mourns the loss of Apple visionary Steve Jobs, I remembered a commencement speech he gave a few years ago at Stanford University which reminded me how important it is to live life with passion and zeal for something you love.
For me, that passion is photography, whether out making pictures or teaching it at the university. The art and soul of photography, the pursuit of it, is deeply satisfying.
"Your time is limited," said Jobs, "so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
One day I may be forced to step down from the great job of being a newspaper photojournalist -- it could be as simple as a budgetary decision for the paper or as epic as a dramatic shift in the newspaper industry -- either way, regardless of what happens, I will always love the art and soul of photography.
Jobs quoted a magazine he used to read that signed off in the last issue with the phrase "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
The beauty of working as a newspaper photojournalist is the hunger of telling stories, using a camera as a form of participation, and documenting the lives of others in their many paths. I try to stay foolish because it reminds me to keep life anything but completely serious. I routinely joke around in the newsroom to try and keep spirits high -- one time I walked around the newsroom with faux cocktails we made for a photo shoot, and advertised happy hour in the photo department during an editors meeting. Hey, why not? Then, just last week, I fixed a 400mm 2.8 Canon lens that needed some tightening. Staffer Stephanie Cordle took a picture of me working on it which I subsequently forwarded to my editor with a joking request for a raise for fixing broken camera equipment. It was all in good fun, and even as I'm sure I can be annoying in my candid humor, who cares, because that's who I am. Oh, and no I didn't get that raise.
